System and method for using e-mail as advertisement medium

Abstract

It is an object of the present invention to use electronic mail as an advertising medium so as to provide a user with an advertisement having a large information-communicating effect. A mail server 40 stores various advertising information items received from various advertisers, as well as distribution dates and/or times and/or recipient user attributes (region of residence, age, sex, etc.) and other such distribution conditions established by respective advertisers for respective advertising information items. When electronic mail is to be sent to a user 20 associated with mail server 40, such server 40 selects an advertising information item or items for which the current date and/or time, attribute or attributes of user 20, and/or the like match the previously established distribution condition or conditions, and affixes such advertising information item or items to a user-defined header of electronic mail which is sent to recipient user 20. Specially designed mail software 21 is present at a computer associated with recipient user 20, such specially designed mail software 21 extracting advertising information item or items from such user-defined header of received electronic mail and displaying same at a mail body or within a progress display window during downloading of mail.

Description

FIELD OF ART[0001] The present invention pertains to art for using electronic mail as an advertising medium through affixing of advertising information to electronic mail.BACKGROUND OF ART[0002] Accompanying popularization of the Internet there is an increase in the number of companies offering free mail services through which electronic mail is distributed at no charge. Conventional free mail services may be categorized into two types. In the first type, represented by Hotmail.TM. of Microsoft Corporation of the U.S., banner ads are pasted into a region at the top, bottom, left, right, or the like of the body of Web-based electronic mail. In the second type, while sending and receiving of electronic mail in standard SMTP-POP format using ordinary mail software is permitted, a user may expect to receive any number of questionnaires, direct mail (DM) solicitations, and the like in any given day.[0003] Moreover, while some variation exists depending upon electronic mail server adminis...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

0017] It is an object of the present invention to use electronic mail as an advertising med...

Problems solved by technology

Furthermore, the standard conventional ways in which advertisers have determined advertising effectiveness (e.g., advertisement view rate) have been limited to methods involving looking at performance in terms of actual customer acquisition or the like or looking at results of surveys performed by viewership rating research firms and so forth.

Furthermore, in the latter type, in which questionnaires and direct mail solicitations are sent, there is the problem that since the user is liable to associate these with pressure tactics and since there is a strongly coercive component to the annoying questionnaires, the user may well not be motivated to examine their con...

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